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Nerval's Lobster writes "Jon Brodkin talked to indie developers (including the creator of Super Mario Bros. Crossover), former Nintendo employees, and a number of others about where exactly Nintendo went wrong over the past few years. Their conclusions? Nintendo made a number of mistakes, including a lack of an indie-developer ecosystem, a refusal to license out core properties such as Super Mario to other gaming platforms (or even iOS and Android), and platforms that don't appeal to hardcore gamers. While the developers suggest Nintendo is taking steps to broaden its horizons, such as by reaching out to smaller studios, it's questionable whether such efforts will succeed in a world where the PS4 and Xbox One are about to enter the market, and iOS and Android are swallowing up mobile gamers' time and dollars. What do you think?"

I bought an xbox just to play GT3. It's a fun enough game that I was willing to throw down the extra bucks for a console and steering wheel just for that game. A lot of people buy a console just because they like one game that runs on it. Kind of a first world problem.

Gotta admit, I'm not much of a gamer. I played GT5 at a friends house, and was so in love with it I went and bought one. I basically just asked the guy at the store what I need to play GT5, and he sold me a console, a steering wheel, and the game. So the console is just "that black thing in my living room that has a steering wheel." So, yeah, it's a Xweestationthingie that I play The Car Game on.

In any event, this all goes to the point: A lot of people, like me, who aren't particularly interested in ga

I think 'play' is very important in order to balance out work. I threw $300 away recently just to get an XBox 360, the latest "Tomb Raider" game and a decently fun enough driving game to fulfill my need for 'play'. And it's worked for me. This comes from a man who hopes he'll never completely lose the inner child that's in him.

And when I'm done playing a video game, I don't throw them out or sell them off. I always seem to end up giving them away to another, younger 'kid'. I once, on a whim, walked into t

Yeah, Nintendo's handheld units print money. The 3DS had a rocky start but it's doing very well now.

Likewise, I suspect Nintendo will turn the Wii U ship around. It won't be as popular as the Wii--the Wii was a one-time blip that I doubt anyone will repeat--but the Wii U will probably do fine once it has a decent library and gets enough household recognition. I hope Nintendo learned a lesson there: don't launch a console that causes naming confusion and don't launch one without a good set of launch titles!

I agree. The WiiU has been a disappointment, but we're only just *now* seeing the first set of 1st party stuff show up. I rolled my eyes at "refusal to license out core properties such as Super Mario to other gaming platforms (or even iOS and Android)", since that's exactly why they'll survive just fine. Want the new Pokemon? Have to buy a Nintendo system. And they will!

And the new Mario game is set to show up soon, looks fantastic and should support online co-op finally. I haven't bought a WiiU yet, but that one might tip my hand so I can play Mario with my brother.

Unfortunately, for the first time ever, Nintendo was selling a new console at a loss. Which means a single title that sells that platform isn't enough to make a profit anymore. When people bought the wii for wii sports or wii fit, it was a good thing. If people did the same with WiiU, nintendo would go bankrupt.

Not sure what you didn't like about Black & White, but X&Y feel like completely different games--the graphics are basically on the same level as Colosseum/XD (the Gamecube games), the mechanics improved quite a bit ("grinding" is easier and much less necessary, there have been several balancing adjustments to the type chart, "mega evolutions" may or may not be a gimmick--only time will tell--and Wi-Fi battling now allows for no restrictions flat-level battles--like in PBR and Gen IV and unlike in B&W), and it's hard *not* to love a game set in France (they re-created the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles with freakishly accurate detail, and you feed your mons friggin' macarons [laduree.com] ).

Blaming it on the name... It's a factor but it's not the entire explanation.Yes, Nintendo will sell a decent amount of machines whenever they unleash their eagerly awaited first party titles, that's basically Nintendo's own analysis and that's the problem. They're going to sell millions of Zelda/Mario/Kart/Smash Bros, but third party developers get to eat shit and nobody will have the confidence to develop proper games for the system apart from shovelware and some token conversions of 360/PS3 games.At this

nobody will have the confidence to develop proper games for the system apart from shovelware

I've seen that 10-letter word tossed around, but nobody appears to be able to agree on a proper definition. (And without a proper definition, discussion goes nowhere [c2.com].) In the early 1990s it meant selling a bunch of demos of indie games on a single CD because they were so small, originally having been developed for floppy or BBS distribution. Now that BBS distribution has grown into a broader paid download market for sale of lower-budget games, I'm not sure from Wikipedia's article [wikipedia.org] what "shovelware" even mea

I like the Urban Dictionary definition. It's descriptive and succinct"1. Software that is hastily made, without proper testing, and 'shoveled' down consumers throats in order to make some quick cash. "

We've had them since time immemorial. Indeed, in the past the precursors of LJN sold cheap chess boards made out of clay, straw and cow dung when real developers used hard wood or ivory.

Likewise, I suspect Nintendo will turn the Wii U ship around. It won't be as popular as the Wii--the Wii was a one-time blip that I doubt anyone will repeat--but the Wii U will probably do fine once it has a decent library and gets enough household recognition. I hope Nintendo learned a lesson there: don't launch a console that causes naming confusion and don't launch one without a good set of launch titles!

Well, the problem with the Wii was third party games practically all sucked. And in recent years, Nin

I'll note that basically the same thing happened with the 3DS, and then it started to recover after a) a price cut and b) finally having a decent library. Now its sales trajectory is quite healthy. I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii U follows the same pattern.

It's hard to know where to begin in shooting down that idea. Nintendo and Valve have massively different company cultures, to the point that I think attempting to merge them in any meaningful way would be a complete disaster for both. Valve also depends on open platforms--Nintendo's entire business model revolves around closed ones. It would be hard to find two companies who are more complete opposites.

Yes, they say opposites attract, but that's an insightful sounding cliche, not a fact of life. The reality

Not so sure that would happen. Valve is embracing a copylefted operating system called SteamOS for its entry to the hardware market, and Nintendo is known to be anti-copyleft [slashdot.org].

Valve/Steam would get a huge library of old Nintendo titles (or well, could get, I guess they would be bundled with an emulator or whatever, an already done one may not work for licensing reasons but maybe Nintendo got the know-how to make one themselves..)

Nintendo already made official emulators even before Virtual Console started printing money. Animal Crossing for GameCube, the e-Reader for Game Boy Advance, and the Classic NES Series for Game Boy Advance all included an NES emulator.

It was an unqualified success from Nintendo's standpoint, in that it moved tons of units. It didn't move lots of third-party games, a problem that Nintendo has long had and continues to work on, but the console itself made lots of money for the company and certainly sold beyond their wildest expectations.

Except for hardcore gamers, in my opinion there is no reason for "low-performing gaming consoles" when in 2-3 years a mid-priced smartphone with HDMI + bluetooth running Android will reach similar results. They can become a platform-agnostic seal, providing what users want from them: Mario stuff and fun family games.

Except for hardcore gamers, in my opinion there is no reason for "low-performing gaming consoles" when in 2-3 years a mid-priced smartphone with HDMI + bluetooth running Android will reach similar results.

You could have said the exact same thing about the PC vs consoles for the past 30 years, and yet, consoles keep on kicking.

The PC didn't kill consoles for the same reason that smartphones won't - People don't want to screw around with variable configurations and unknown levels of performance and controller compatibility. They want a known-working machine such that they can buy a game, put it in, turn it on, and have it work exactly the same way as it did last time, as it does for everyone else, as the manufacturer intended it to work.

Ironically, I see modern consoles as their own biggest enemy in that regard - Forced upgrades that break older features, forced online play even for simple single-player games, DRM that (especially for new releases) fails to authenticate the player as often as it works, for-pay premium content in games you've already bought... The console companies have done their damnedest to shift the experience as far as possible away from their one and only edge over general purpose devices: "it just works". Until... It doesn't.

The PC didn't kill consoles for the same reason that smartphones won't - People don't want to screw around with variable configurations and unknown levels of performance and controller compatibility. They want a known-working machine such that they can buy a game, put it in, turn it on, and have it work exactly the same way as it did last time, as it does for everyone else, as the manufacturer intended it to work.

I am less certain than you seem to be that smartphone manufacturers will be unable to adequatel

Let's say you use a succession of Android phones [...] . If it's also extremely cheap...

I don't see how it'll become "extremely cheap" in Slashdot's home country as long as upgrading from a dumbphone to an Android phone costs hundreds of dollars per year on the major carriers. Verizon and Sprint don't use CSIMs for CDMA2000, instead programming the CDMA2000 subscriber identity directly into the phone. They decline as a standard practice to activate service on a smartphone without an expensive data plan. AT&T is known to cram a data plan onto a voice-only SIM inserted into a smartphone [slashdot.org]. Or

Or should people buy and carry two phones: a feature phone to make calls on and an Android phone to play games on over Wi-Fi?

or, get an iPod touch. problem solved

In that case, how many people are willing to buy and carry a feature phone to make calls on and a 4" tablet to play games on? It'd have to be a brand-new iPod touch, as used ones will probably be fourth-generation and thus unable to use MFi controllers.

That might work for turn-based games, but real-time games are far more sensitive to latency than the noninteractive movies and television series for which the Chromecast was designed. How much display latency does the Chromecast add?

Did you try OnLive when it first came out? Have you tried it recently? What exactly is Sony planning for backwards compatibility?

(We're talking about the future here. The problems you're talking about are getting better. At some point, they'll get better enough that for most

The PC didn't kill consoles for the same reason that smartphones won't - People don't want to screw around with variable configurations and unknown levels of performance and controller compatibility. They want a known-working machine such that they can buy a game, put it in, turn it on, and have it work exactly the same way as it did last time, as it does for everyone else, as the manufacturer intended it to work.

I am less certain than you seem to be that smartphone manufacturers will be unable to adequately address that problem.

Let's say you use a succession of Android phones, and your TV has a ChromeCast attached to it, and some particular bluetooth controller becomes a de-facto standard. The experience begins to approach that of a solid console. If it's also extremely cheap...

(Would I bet on this? No, not with my own money. But I wouldn't bet against it either.)

I am less certain than you seem to be that smartphone manufacturers will be unable to adequately address that problem.

I think that smartphones and tablets could address all of those problems except two: Unknown level of performance (unless they artificially limit their games to a "weakest link" baseline level, in which case that still leaves room for a high-performance dedicated gaming rig to steal the show); and screen resolution, which ranges all the way from HVGA (320x480) to FHD (1080p).

... in which case that still leaves room for a high-performance dedicated gaming rig to steal the show...

As Moore's Law gets to work on "casual" games, I'm not certain that in the long run there will always be a market for "a high-performance dedicated gaming rig" that's big enough for the console industry to cater to.

My experience has been, the more one is focused on "high-performance gaming", the more one is likely to tolerate the tradeoffs involved in gaming on a general purpose computer instead of a ded

Ironically, I see modern consoles as their own biggest enemy in that regard - Forced upgrades that break older features, forced online play even for simple single-player games, DRM that (especially for new releases) fails to authenticate the player as often as it works, for-pay premium content in games you've already bought... The console companies have done their damnedest to shift the experience as far as possible away from their one and only edge over general purpose devices: "it just works". Until... It

I'm also not sure if I'd enjoy playing Mario Kart on a touch screen. Sure you could possibly do steering with the gyro sensors, but I don't like that either. I even play MarioKart Wii with the thumbstick because I find it more precise. Even if that was good, there's too many buttons needed for Mario Kart (gas, brake, weapon, hop, look back, probably forgetting something) that playing on a touch screen would be pretty frustrating.

I have a WII, didn't see the need to upgrade to the WII-U. I also have a XBox, had a PS3 but only because I wanted to watch BlueRays. Is it me, or has Nintendo just lagged a bit in terms of graphics? They revolutionized the controllers with the WII, but now I really feel the others have caught up. I do not know if the Nintendo catalog will be enough to keep people with the platform just to play those games. Time will tell.

I have a WII, didn't see the need to upgrade to the WII-U. I also have a XBox, had a PS3 but only because I wanted to watch BlueRays. Is it me, or has Nintendo just lagged a bit in terms of graphics? They revolutionized the controllers with the WII, but now I really feel the others have caught up. I do not know if the Nintendo catalog will be enough to keep people with the platform just to play those games. Time will tell

It's not you. It's that the Wii was aimed at a different market. When the Wii was relea

...because, I mean, cash rich companies with great selling mobile devices, portfolios of valuable IP, and games that sell 4+ million copies in a few days go bust all the time...
Just because the WiiU isn't the hottest selling console doesn't mean the 3ds isn't doing utterly stupendous numbers for them.

I bought an original Nintendo to play Super Mario Bros on. Then I bought the SNES for the next Mario/Zelda, then the GameCube to play Mario again and then Zelda Four Swords and 4 GBA's! I bought the Wii for New Super Mario Bros, and again the Wii U for NSMB WiiU (or whatever it is called). Currently I have 1 game for each of those platforms (Wii and Wii U), and its the Mario games!

As long as they make games that are so fun to multiplayer with my friends I will buy whatever console and g

The suggestion that Nintendo should release on iOS and Android would be suicide. The sales figures for the 3DS have already proven the nuts that keep saying Nintendo should release Pokemon the iPhone are insane short term thinkers. Their hand held dominance has yet to be killed. I'll believe Nintendo should start looking at selling on the iCult(Trolling Apple) when Pokemon starts selling less than 1 Million at launch. Since X/Y hit 4 Million I don't think they have to worry about that. Their console market, on the other hand, has been weak since the N64 days. The Wii's success was mostly a fluke caused by MS and Sony raising prices too much, and a couple of gimmicks that were worth some attention by some: motion controls, and wii fit.

The WII appealed to women. No joke. I know a lot of guy's girlfriends and wives who hated Nintendos and Sega and Playstations absolutely loved the WII when it came out. Now it didn't last, but largely that demographic are still playing games, but now doing so on Facebook and their phones.

The Wii's success was mostly a fluke caused by MS and Sony raising prices too much, and a couple of gimmicks that were worth some attention by some: motion controls, and wii fit.

That was no fluke; it was the logical extension of the same strategy that made the DS so successful after a rocky start. Nintendo built a system with a unique feature (motion control), made new IPs that leveraged that feature (Wii Sports, Wii Fit), targeted the nongamer crowd by offering a pleasant "Mii" aesthetic and offered classic Nintendo franchises for everyone else (Mario Kart). The end result was wildly successful.

By contrast, the Wii U is bombing because although it also has a unique feature (gamepad), its new IPs are mostly niche titles (Wonderful 101) instead of mainstream ones and the next iterations of Nintendo franchises are either also niche (Pikmon) or late (Wii Sports, Mario Kart).

The suggestion that Nintendo should release on iOS and Android would be suicide.... The Wii's success was mostly a fluke caused by MS and Sony raising prices too much, and a couple of gimmicks that were worth some attention by some: motion controls, and wii fit.

I agree that releasing outside the Nintendo-sphere would be suicide. Apple's lock-in to high-priced hardware for all their stuff is why they are able to throw in high margins ($600 for a phone that costs $150 in parts) and make money hand over fist.

I disagree that the Wii's success is a fluke. Lets just look at the first party titles:

Since over 100 different Wii titles sold over a million units, and the platform sold over 870 million games, customers seem to have found quite a few titles worth purchasing. Though not surprisingly, the top 10 best selling games all came from Nintendo.

The suggestion that Nintendo should release on iOS and Android would be suicide. The sales figures for the 3DS have already proven the nuts that keep saying Nintendo should release Pokemon the iPhone are insane short term thinkers

The GameBoy had a slower ramp up as handheld gaming started getting mainstream traction. Nintendo DS appears to have been the peak. Something happened during its release... around 2007 I think, though I'm having trouble recalling just what was released around then... oh wait, the iPhone followed shortly after by Andro

My contention is that the market is not large enough to sustain Nintendo's hardware development costs and they will be forced to exit the market after the next handheld system flops (or possibly the system after that). People who think everything is just fine must believe Nintendo can survive on ~2 million/year sales or possibly even less. If they do survive, the systems will be limited to almost entirely Nintendo games with relatively few 3rd party titles due to the small install base.

Let's pretend for a moment that Nintendo was to make a Mario game for iOS. Would it be in full 3D like Mario 64, or a classic platformer like Super Mario 3?

Neither, it'd be an endless runner where you simply tap the screen to jump on Goombas and over gaps, because touch screens lack the control for anything more sophisticated.

Sure, there are games on the App Store that are fully fledged platformers, but are they any good? No, because (in my experience) your hands are covering 80% of the screen making it impossible to see what's actually going on.

True. But iOS 7 adds support for external gamepads that clamp onto the iPhone, and even before that, there were controllers that emulate a keyboard. Android has supported USB HID, Xbox 360, and PS3 controllers for a long time, though Android 4.2 and 4.3 broke Wii Remote support. But I'm not so sure people will buy a $40 controller to play a $1 to $6 game. Nintendo could try porting the touch-friendly games it has made in the Mario franchise on the DS, such as March of the Minis.

I will agree that I don't like playing games on the tablet or phone for just the reason you stated. My son on the other hand has an xbox 360 that has primarily been used to watch netflix since all of his gaming is done on either a tablet or android phone. I don't think it is the quality of the games that has caused him to ignore the xbox it is more likely because he can play anywhere anytime {except school} even riding in the car. Add facebook and texting and he pretty much lives on his android phone or the

HD has made games inherently too expensive to produce. The only things that turn any profit at all are graphics-are-everything reskins of games developed back when it was profitable to focus on things that actually mattered, and those will only sustain the industry for so long. We're headed for another crash, one that Nintendo could have survived a generation ago when it resisted the HD gimmick. Now that it has fallen into that trap, though, it's as hosed as Sony's and Microsoft's gaming divisions will be.

At least I can back up my saved game progress on a PC, which can't be done on a console.

What is this "can't" you speak of, where have you been for the past 18 years. There are these things called memory cards...the PSone (and other consoles like the Saturn and Neo Geo) had them in 1995.

The PS2 also had them in 2000.

In 2006, not only did the PS3 have a built in hard drive for game saves and content..it also has USB ports for external storage and a device that let you copy your saves to and from the PS3 and those PS1/PS2 memory cards. Some PS3 models also have a built i

Nintendo did not just survive the crash of '83, they were the ones that took the lead in resurrecting the industry.

Then again, they survived their mid 90's slump. And each time the XBOX/PS war is rekindled on a new generation of systems.

And even if Wii-U falters, Nintendo can survive on brand recognition alone from the mass of parents in their 30s and 40s that grew up with the NES. Now, perhaps in 10 years when the XBOX/PS generation gamers start having kids of their own, things might change.

While I don't think it's reached that point yet, at least Nintendo has plenty of cash to float on. One of Nintendo's bigger issues is that they used to be a trend setter. They don't seem to understand that the landscape is drastically changing and that there is nothing they can do about it other then keep up or fall behind. They are no longer steering the industry, but apparently no one has told them that. Don't get me wrong, I love Nintendo and I want them to continue to succeed.

As an old timer, I can thing of a console I would paid a couple hundred bucks for: An all in one system that has every game ever made from 8-bit through Game Cube (or at least 64) pre-loaded and ready to be hooked up to my HDTV. I have been wishing for this for a long time.

BTW - if you have not yet played Super Mario Bros. Crossover, you have not lived until you have played SMB as one of the Contra guys.

I don't have exact figures, but I've read that Apple's 13% of activated smartphones account for far more than 13% of the dollars spent on paid applications, especially paid games. This is true especially in the anglosphere, where you don't even have to redub your game's voice acting into multiple languages to get it into Canada, USA, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

How is a guy who writes "Super Mario Brothers Crossover" an "independent developer"? Seems like he's a leech on the core brand: Mario and the extended Nintendo world. Furthermore, as long as the core brand is compelling enough and has enough followers to inspire leeches, I don't think it's in any danger of fading away.

This is a continuation of a chain of events that began when the N64 was released. Whether it was the cart vs CD debate, or whether it was something else, the result was that the majority of third party developers stuck with the Playstation. It's been the same story ever since: Third parties are hard to come by, and Nintendo's first party games are criticized for being too childish. The first Wii was a huge success because it filled a casual gaming need that is now being fulfilled by iPads and phones.

Nintendo's handhelds seem to do well, perhaps because the same people who talked up the "childish" nature of Nintendo's games were also self-selected out of the handheld gaming audience.

Nintendo made a number of mistakes, including a lack of an indie-developer ecosystem,

True. Nintendo hardware is very nice. An indie-developer program would attract talent and open the door to great games and a profitable future. They just need to find the right branding, probably something like a "Mario Labs" where the gamers also play the role of 'investors', deciding if projects deserve a grant or deserve to get canned.

a refusal to license out core properties such as Super Mario to other gaming platforms (or even iOS and Android), and platforms that don't appeal to hardcore gamers.

False. Core properties (Super Mario, Zelda, et al) are what make a Nintendo console what it is. If you want to play Super Mario, you know what console you need to have in order to play it -- A Nintendo. As soon as Mario makes an appearance on iOS or Android, that's the end of what makes Nintendo special. In essence, they'd become another SEGA; a popular system when I was a teenager, but now just a hit or miss game studio. That's not the road Nintendo wants to go down.

While the developers suggest Nintendo is taking steps to broaden its horizons, such as by reaching out to smaller studios, it's questionable whether such efforts will succeed in a world where the PS4 and Xbox One are about to enter the market, and iOS and Android are swallowing up mobile gamers' time and dollars.

Nintendo knows what the other companies don't:- $250 entry point- Make very reliable hardware, but do NOT make it a loss leader [wikipedia.org]- Curate available titles very carefully to ensure maximum revenue

The gamers looking for the high-end PS4 and Xbox One experience aren't Nintendo's core customers.The games playing casual games on iOS and Android aren't Nintendo's core customers either.Nintendo should not be the dog who lost his bone to a reflection.They know their customer base and they serve them well, which is why they keep making a profit.

Game consoles are just stupid bricks that don't evolve. Looking at the speed that the PC industry has evolved it's easy to see that the game consoles are quickly left in the dead behind when it comes to performance.

Nintendo's biggest weakness is clearly their complete distain and disregard for supporting online play. From tedious friend codes, to a lack of headset/mic support, to their stubborn insistence in "going their own way" with an online marketplace, their online/connectivity factor is woefully neglected and abused.

How can Nintendo make a billion dollars tomorrow? A Pokemon MMO.

How can Nintendo sell a million Wii U consoles? Give Smash Brothers, Mario Cart, Mario Party, and Starfox the same kind of online matchmaking that you would find in CoD or MoH from any LAST GENERATION console.

Will they? Who knows. But the market for a console that doesn't extend past the living room is drying up, and while there will always be a dedicated band of single player or local multiplayer based fans eager for whatever remake from ten years ago Nintendo wants to produce, the rest of the market has expanded their horizon beyond the four walls of their living room, and demands their console do the same.

I almost exclusively game on my Android smartphone nowadays. My kids mostly use their Android tablets (with occasional DS usage).

That being said, Nintendo would be idiotic to release "Super Mario Brothers" for Android or iOS. People know that the place to get Nintendo titles (Mario, Zelda, etc) is on a Nintendo system. They will (for the most part) buy a WiiU, 3DS, or 2DS just to get that game. If they release the games on Android/iOS, they become just another Android/iOS developer. Perhaps they would

The other two console makers are surviving almost exclusively on FPS games. Eventually that market will saturate and simultatenously the innovations in the games will be so minimal that the profit will start to disappear. Neither Sony nor Microsoft seem to have a plan for what to do when the Halo / Battlefield / Medal of Honor / Call of Duty franchises start to lose their appeal. While Nintendo isn't turning in mega bucks selling these games they do have a much broader pallet of gaming genres making up their title sales.

Shovelware? Have you LOOKED at most of the DS and Wii games? MOST of them _are_ shovelware!

The quality of Nintendo's games have always been fantastic (technical, game design, etc.)

Nintendo chose Quality over Quantity, and with that, I would agree with your argument. The other consoles chose Quantity, knowing that it was a gamble -- with enough titles, eventually you will get enough "mega-hits".

I agree with this. Nintendo needs to maintain very tight control of their core franchises. They possibly could have gone the route of developing their own games for Android/IOS, but I think I know why they stayed away. It's really hard to offer a consistent good product, especially on Android, with so many different devices to target, and while certain games work well, the fact that there's only a touch screen for input really limits what you can do with it . I've tried using emulators, and playing Mario t

maybe with apple releasing the MFi controllers, this would enable nintendo to get into the iPhone game. I'm already seeing controllers that essentially insert the phone into an xyab setup. imagine a nintendo-branded iPhone controller with games that only played on that controller. that would be pretty sweet.

There had been previous attempts to put controllers on iOS by having controllers emulate the keyboard, such as the iControlPad and the iCade. Perhaps their lack of uptake can be attributed to few people wanting to buy a controller that costs as much as 10 to 20 games.

And it's that attitude at Nintendo that has been their problem for 20 years now--blindly assuming that since they were on top once that they'll always have a guaranteed place in the console world, no matter how much the competition (or world) passes them by. Many a company has followed that kind of arrogance right into bankruptcy.

On the other hand, it's also premature to declare a company dead when their console one generation back was a huge success, and their handhelds are still extremely popular. On top of that, it's easier than ever to not be "locked in" to a policy of not supporting indie developers with everything being on the cloud now.

The Wii only achieved an odd form of success though. While lots of people bought it and Nintendo profited on the sales of the consoles, nowadays they're just sitting on people's shelves unused. Even with that kind of market saturation is it successful if the average Wii owner has, what, less than 5 games? Less than 2? I don't know the answer but if something is purchased but then rarely used it's only a partial success. They have to sell games too.

The Wii only achieved an odd form of success though. While lots of people bought it and Nintendo profited on the sales of the consoles, nowadays they're just sitting on people's shelves unused. Even with that kind of market saturation is it successful if the average Wii owner has, what, less than 5 games? Less than 2? I don't know the answer but if something is purchased but then rarely used it's only a partial success. They have to sell games too.

Actually, unlike Microsoft and Sony, all Nintendo has to do is sell the system and they've already made a profit, even on launch day.

As far as selling games goes, well let's take a look at the top selling games across all consoles

If we disregard Wii Sports (since it was included for free) and all previous generation consoles, then we have the following:Mario Kart WiiWii Sports Resort (some of these were included, but some were purchases separatelyWii PlayNew Super Mario Bros WiiGrand Theft Auto: San AndreasWii FitWii Fit PlusGTA V

That's 5 or 6 top sellers for the Wii (depending on if you count Resort), and only 2 for the competition. Looks like they aren't hurting too bad. But what about just the overall total of all games sold for the console, worldwide?

So yeah, they are on the bottom of that metric, but still very respectable...only 4% lower than the PS3 and 15% lower than the 360. Not bad at all considering all those system supposedly sitting unused on shelves.

Now that the Wii is dead I've been looking through its library to purchase some second hand titles and catch up on what I might have missed. There's not much there to recommend the effort. As an avid gamer since the first NES I have to say the Wii's library is the saddest modern library I've ever seen. I know it had a reputation for shovelware but wow.
Nintendo should have taken the windfall profits of the absolute Hail Mary they landed on the Wii and positioned themselves as a software company. They've de

I've heard (or experienced) good things from Sin and Punishment, Muramusa: The Demon Blade, No More Heroes, Resident Evil 4 (even if it was a remake), Xenoblade Chronicles, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, The Last Story, Red Steel 2, and Zack & Wiki.

I have a Wii and 360. I don't play either much anymore, but the only games I played much of on the 360 was Rock Band games. Other than that, it was just for the NetFlix or Xfinity apps, which I stopped using when I concluded what a waste of money the Gold membership

Nintendo also found a way to appeal to old people and fairly infirm people. Nintendo was the first to make a practical break from the up-down-left-right-a-b controller to something that worked without needing to push buttons, depending on the game. Yes, Nintendo is now going to have to compete with other nontraditional controller systems, but they're up for the task.

There's a lot of money to be made in appealing to non-hard-core gamers, in appealing to those who might casually game, but aren't going to play every day or even every week. There are lot more of those than there are hard-core gamers, and if you can get significant market penetration in a group that probably shouldn't even care, then you can make a lot of money.

Nintendo appears to be able to do that, moreso than other companies. Sega's position was what the other game makers' positions are today, and it ultimately cost them when they slipped and their hard-core gaming clientele left, and they didn't have a casual gaming business to sustain them.

The Wii sold consoles, but it never sold games. You think Sony and MS have made their money from raw console sales? Shit, they LOST money on their hardware sales for years. The real bank was in the chunk they got from the software.

OK, lets look at the current generation (well... current because the WiiU is out) and previous 3 generations.

Current:WiiU: Weaker hardware than its competitors, but only slightly cheaper than the announced launch prices for the other two consoles. Isn't doing so well at the moment. Third-party developers are hesitant to support it.Xbox One: May flop due to marketing mistakes by Microsoft and their insistence that the Kinect is mandatory.PS4. Current predicted winner of the next console generation thanks

I think Nintendo should pull a SEGA and get out of the hardware business. they have plenty of software IP franchises to sustain them. I'd also _love_ it if they embraced SteamOS and started publishing to SteamOS (thus preventing Microsoft and Sony from getting their business)

Actually I think the reverse. Sega had to leave the hardware business because of the expensive (read Billions in losses) cost of hardware. Todays ARM devices can be profitable for a few dollars. They have a large back catalogue; great brand; experienced staff...with connections. Many companies are fighting for the ARM console. Sega has a better chance than most with little risk.

At one time, Nintendo's market cap exceeded that of Sony Music, Sony Pictures, Sony Electronics, and Sony Computer Entertainment combined. But I'll admit that that was during the "Wii prints money too" era.

I wonder why the Nintendo board doesn't do exactly as these utterly clueless reportless say.

I don't agree with the article, but a quick look around just at the massive missteps made in the gaming industry that have bought down great companies. Nintendo currently have a lemon on there hands with the Wii U, and the console market is going to get busy again, threatened by Nintndo and Sony for Power...and Android *everywhere*. The Nintendo board clearly have made a mistake. I agree this article is probably not it, but it exists because Nintendo is with its console in trouble, and stupidly just as ever